Is there any more form of democratic dissent more American than the lunatic militia conspiracy? Four Georgian geezers are in deep federal shit after being apprehended for a convoluted plan to kill lots of people. Airplanes, poison, and explosives.

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All four of the wannabe terrorists were over 65, the NYT reports, but still had the vigor to throw together a mish mash of terror attack wet dreaming: they'd cook up 10 pounds of ricin, an extremely toxic organic poison, and drop it from an airplane over DC. Oh, and they'd also throw it out of the window of a speeding car. And there was something about machine guns and bombs. This was mighty ambitious for four guys! Unfortunately for them, as the Federation of American Scientists notes, "For ricin to be delivered as an aerosol, it must be lyophilized—a process by which a liquid substance is dried by freezing in a high vacuum. While it is not overly difficult to aerosolize ricin, this step does present a technical challenge." This mode of delivery—particularly the Hey let's just dump some out of the car approach, probably wouldn't have been too effective. Even if they were smart enough to pull it off. Luckily, the government-haters are in custody, after which they'll spend many ironic years housed by tax dollars. [NYT]